heres the situation. today i noticed that the volume registered much higher than normal. with the knob turned a quarter dial it sounds almost as loud as half way used to be. i tried many cd's to troubleshoot this problem. but no luck. ive unplugged, powered on/off and nothing. it still sounds peculiarly loud. my gf arrived and said the same. so i am not crazy. but my amp may be?
it is too late to call my dealer. so i need some advice here. there isnt much to troubleshoot since all i have hooked up is an integrated, cdp and 2 speakers. i also want to say that ive also noticed a slight decrease in sound quality, but id rather stay optimistic.
i have a musical fidelity amp, dynaudio speakers, toshiba dvd is the current source (i know, but ive been using it since the start, it is my next upgrade so no remarks please -lol). everything is less than 4 months old. i do listen to 6 hours of music a day. any suggestions or comments as to the source of this incidental volume increase?

the only other things i can add is that i recently changed speaker cables(jps ultras) and speaker stands. but that was over a week ago and i only noticed a change in volume today. i also connected a sony cd-recorder to the surge protector. but did not run any interconnects to the amp or cd player that im using.
thanks all